


not just a four man alien kicking ass machine

by gidgit



Category: Lazer Team (2015)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gidgit/pseuds/gidgit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the battle with the Worg, Hagan's pretty sure the most pressing threat to his immediate health isn't the impending journey to space.</p>
<p>It's that Zach won't stop trying to help him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not just a four man alien kicking ass machine

The last straw comes in what otherwise might have been a routine training session; one without any major mistakes or incidents, something their band of misfits turned heroes of Earth has yet to ever experience.

Fifty minutes in, though, and Hagan’s hopes had certainly been up – Herman had only looked green for a moment or two after his warm up laps, and they’d managed to convince Woody to shut off the slow motion imaging function of his helmet for the duration of the session, a feature with which he was currently having something of a love affair. It wasn’t flawless, but they were putting on a perfectly acceptable performance – for them, it was the equivalent of passing with flying colors, and the end of the hour was nearly in sight. 

Which is, of course, when everything went to shit.

A piece of equipment resembling a pitching machine was firing in training ground grenades – they detonated with a concussive force that packed some punch, but thankfully weren’t intended to cause death or dismemberment. Hagan was doing well to block them, the bulk of the grenades bouncing harmlessly away off his shield. He was preparing to deflect the next round in the same fashion as he had the others, when he heard someone call out: “I got it!”

There was the sound of a shot being fired, and Hagan went stumbling forward as a laser blast hit the inside of his shield from behind.

“Zach, what the fu–“ he’d started to shout, at the exact moment that the unblocked concussive grenade exploded at his feet.

Hagan pushes himself up into a sitting position, ears ringing violently, and notices that he’s at least fifteen feet away from the place he’d been previously standing. His body appears to notice that as well, and after a moment aches and pains begin to spring up throughout his entire anatomy, presumably in protest against being flung through the air like a thirty-six year old ragdoll.

He coughs, trying desperately to catch his wind, as Herman appears at his side.

“Damn, dude! I thought you might grow wings for a second there!” he crows, sounding delighted by the development.

“I measured you at two meters off the ground at the highest point of your trajectory,” Woody chimes in. “It was rather impressive, actually.”

“Thanks,” Hagan gasps, his breathing still not entirely back to normal. He thinks he hears Woody mumble something about the scene probably looking better rendered in slow motion, and decides to ignore it.

“Oh, man, if you were recording that, you have _got_ to get me the footage,” a fourth voice adds excitedly. “I’m doing alright on Facebook and Twitter since the whole ‘saving the world’ thing, but I’ve been meaning to build more of a Vine presence.”

That one, Hagan can’t quite bring himself to ignore.

“ _What the hell is wrong with you?!”_ he screams. His bruised diaphragm takes some umbrage with that kind of abuse coming so soon, and he lapses into another wracking fit of coughs.

Zach blinks, swiveling his head to glance in turn from Hagan, to Woody, then Herman, and finally back to Hagan. He extends the forefinger of his non-cannon hand and points at his own chest: _Me?_

“No, the other teammate who nearly incinerated me with their goddamn laser arm!” Hagan shouts. Zach just blinks again. “Yes you, idiot!”

Zach shrugs dismissively, a ‘Hagan’s being cranky and ridiculous’ sort of gesture. “I told you I got it,” he says, as if this is an entirely sufficient justification.

“But you didn’t get it! You got _me!_ For, like, the hundredth fucking time this week!” Hagan’s almost spluttering with frustration now. He pushes himself to his feet at last, glowering at the infuriatingly unconcerned teenager.

“Don’t be such a drama queen –“ Zach starts to say, and Hagan cuts him off.

“I’m being dramatic? Really?” Hagan turns to Woody, who very much resembles a deer in the headlights. “Woody, could you remind us all how training ended yesterday?”

“Er… the session had to stop early when the mock laser was broken –“

“And how did that happen?” Hagan presses impatiently.

“Well… Zachary’s attempt to intercept an incoming shot midair with one of his own caused a… slight explosion…”

“That singed off half my eyebrows,” Hagan finishes. “And morning practice? What happened then?”

Woody still appears reluctant to participate in this conversation, but he continues after an insistent gesture from Hagan. “You had to be taken to the infirmary after Zachary tackled you out of the way in a close combat scenario –“

“Ooh, that’s right! How are your nuts feeling today, Hagan? I forgot to ask.”

“Shut up, Herman,” Hagan snaps, not allowing himself to become distracted. Herman shrugs and shakes his head. “And the day before that, Woody?”

“You were exhibiting possible concussion symptoms after Zachary –“ Woody stops short, a hard whack and ferocious look courtesy of Zachary quelling his explanation. “I’m not the one who brought it up,” Woody mutters sullenly, rubbing the spot where Zach hit him.

“Okay, so what?” Zach says, a bit defensively. “I don’t know why you’re bitching, I’m just trying to lighten the load for you and your decaying old body.”

_How old do you think I am?_ is the first thought that comes to Hagan’s mind, but he doesn’t want to get off track; he also isn’t entirely sure that he wants to hear Zach’s honest answer to that question. “Zach, there is an alien light shield literally attached to me. I can handle it. In fact, the only thing I ever need extra protection from is _you_.”

Zach scowls, anger appearing to make his eyes glow more brightly as his face flushes red. “Well don’t worry, I’ll make sure not to bust my ass to cover yours anymore,” he snarls.

“Perfect! That’s exactly what I’m trying to get at here!” Hagan retorts.

Zach exhales heavily through his teeth, so forceful that he sounds like a growling animal. For a second Hagan thinks he might take a swing at him – it’s not like it hasn’t happened before – but Zach only spins on his heel and storms away, flipping the bird behind him.

“That went well,” Herman says derisively, watching Zach as he goes.

“I think so, too,” Hagan replies, digging a finger in his ear to try and stop the last of the ringing.

* * *

The three of them are in their bunks later that night – the team’s still sleeping four to a room, but at least the room’s in the barracks instead of the brig – when Woody sits straight up, moving so quickly that Hagan knows that there’s a problem before he utters a word.

“Er, Hagan,” Woody says, “I think Zachary might need an extraction.”

Hagan sighs loudly, resisting the urge to flip over and bury his face in a pillow. “He’s a big boy, let him extract himself.”

“That’s gonna be a negative,” Woody says, shaking his head. “He’s doing the _Iron Man_ thing.”

Hagan starts to say something in response but stops himself, exchanging a quick look with Herman.

“You mean, like, going all renegade on some ambiguous foreign terrorist group?” Hagan asks uncertainly.

“Oh, no, sorry. I meant the _Iron Man 2_ thing,” Woody clarifies. Hagan exchanges another glance with Herman.

“You mean getting drunk and grossly misusing his super weapon technology while falling into a self-destructive downward spiral?” Herman tries.

Woody nods.

“That’s great,” Hagan mutters, reluctantly pushing himself up from his bunk. He pauses, waiting for the others to jump to their feet, but they’re both just watching him. “What, you aren’t gonna help?”

“Nuh-uh,” Herman says. “It was y’all’s bitch fit that caused this little emotional episode, you go fix it.”

“It wasn’t a _bitch fit,_ it was a _legitimate fucking grievance!”_ Hagan argues heatedly. “He blew me up! Twice!”

Herman and Woody don’t say anything; they just keep staring at him.

“Goddammit, fine. Just tell me where he is, can you do that much?”

Woody can, it turns out, do that much, and Hagan is soon on his way to some distant corner of the base. He hears the trouble before he sees it and, cursing under his breath, moves a little faster.

“…tell me what to do with my laser arm,” a belligerent voice slurs, followed by the telltale sound of a plasma shot being fired. _I’m gonna fucking kill him_ , Hagan thinks furiously as he rounds the corner –

… _Then again, maybe that’ll already be taken care of._

A nervous MP is pointing a Taser at Zach’s chest, which is all well and good; a few other young soldiers in the area, however, have their hands on their service weapons, with a couple already out of their holsters. No one’s aiming yet, but this is a situation that could go very badly, very quickly.

“I need you to put down the… um… arm-cannon, and back away,” the MP orders, and there’s a slight quaver in his voice. Hagan wonders idly if he was familiar with Zach’s orderly from the day of the not-surgery. 

“He can’t put it down,” Hagan says, speaking around the sudden dryness in his mouth, and everyone in the area turns in his direction. Everyone but Zach, that is, who proceeds to blow a particularly wet raspberry.

Hagan focuses on the MP, because if he pays attention to Zach for too long he might start to second-guess the decision to try and save his life. “Listen, uh…” This is as far as he gets before he realizes that he doesn’t actually know the proper way to address military police. Is it officer, like, ‘hey, Officer Jones,’ or do you use military rank – 

He’s getting distracted. Shit. “... sir, we’re Lazer Team –“

“Yeah, bitch!”

“ _Shut up, Zach_ – and the armor doesn’t come off. I think maybe just you and me should handle this,” Hagan says, managing to finish on a relatively even note. The MP’s Taser, Zach can deal with (well, probably); he’d fare much poorer against a bullet from an anxious private, and he’s acting like enough of an ass to seriously risk catching one. If Hagan can just clear away the spectators, he’s looking at a much better outcome for everyone involved.

The MP seems a little skeptical, but he glances from Zach’s laser arm to Hagan’s shield hand, and eventually he nods.

Hagan waits a moment for him to give the order; the MP, though, is looking right back at Hagan. “Oh! Okay, uh… dismissed…?”

The soldiers all exchange glances, clearly unsure whether they’re required to follow his orders or not. Hagan doesn’t know if they are either, truth be told, but in situations like this he’s found that real authority often doesn’t matter half as much as perceived authority does.

“I said, dismissed!” Hagan tries again, in a voice that’s louder and more baritone. The soldiers hesitate for just another moment, and then they start to move, reholstering weapons and shuffling away from the scene.

_I can’t believe that worked_ , Hagan marvels, somewhat impressed with himself.

Or, well. It might have worked.

If Zach Spencer, the biggest dickhead to ever live, didn’t choose that moment to raise his cannon and say, “Cool it, Captain Buzzkill, I didn’t even get to the best part.”

One of the dismissed soldiers wheels back around, gun in hand, and Hagan deploys his shield, standing between the private and Zach. Thankfully, the solider doesn’t pull the trigger.

But the MP does.

Hagan sighs wearily as Zach hits the ground, thinking that all things considered, it’s really not the most terrible outcome.

A moment of silence passes around the group. “Get the fuck out of here,” Hagan mutters to the soldiers, and this time there’s no hesitation as they make themselves scarce.

Zach’s groaning and twitching some, which is pretty much standard fare for having just been tased. Hagan withdraws his shield and walks over to the MP, who’s standing over Zach’s prone form and at least has the presence of mind to look apologetic.

“I could’ve handled it,” Hagan says, but it doesn’t have any harshness to it.

“Sorry, sir. He didn’t give me any choice.”

“Yeah.” Hagan pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. He knows that the MP is right – he’s been there himself, and that time Zach didn’t even have alien technology to threaten people with – but he can’t help being annoyed with this… stranger. If Zach needs to be tased into submission, it’s at least a decision that should be made by people who are looking out for him. “I’m gonna take it from here,” he says after a few more moments have passed.

The MP sneaks another glance at the shield gauntlet, says, “Yes, sir,” and hightails it.

Hagan waits another second, then turns to the body on the ground. “Zach?”

“I think I peed,” comes the muffled response.

Hagan kneels next to him, rolling him slowly onto his back. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” he says, then pauses. A sheen of sweat coats Zach’s skin, and his breathing is quick and somewhat labored. “Well. You _might_ be lucky,” he says, kind of doubtfully. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to send the MP away.

“You know,” Zach says, voice shallow and breathy in a way that’s really starting to make Hagan nervous, “I’m thinkin’ this might not be so good for me, on account of I don’t feel so hot right now.”

“Being electrocuted for the fourth time in a span of eight days? No, I don’t think that’s ‘so good’ for you, kid,” Hagan snaps, unable to keep the brunt of his vitriol out of his voice.

Zach winces, though the reaction is somewhat delayed, and the movements of his body appear to alternate between too jerky and too fluid within fractions of seconds. “You’re so loud,” he complains, making an abortive attempt to place a hand over his ear.

Hagan bites back about a dozen nasty retorts, and the only thing he’s left with is a muttered, “Sorry.” Zach doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard him, though his breathing does begin to slow, long inhales through the nose followed by soft exhales through barely parted lips.

Still, Zach is ever rarely so subdued, and Hagan figures it’s just as a good a time as any to get a little unpleasantness out of the way. The two Taser barbs are sticking out of Zach’s abdomen, one in the center of his left ribcage, the other just over his hip. Hagan’s fingers close over the first barb and he pulls sharply, only relishing it a little.

“Ow!” Zach yelps, and he stirs enough to shoot Hagan with a resentful look. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just sit still,” Hagan huffs. Zach does, surprisingly enough, just sit still, and Hagan wastes no time in turning to the second barb and yanking that out as well.

“OW!” Zach yells again, this time riling enough to give Hagan a small shove along with an angry glare. “Jesus, Hagan!”

“Yeah, that’s actually bleeding more than I thought it would. Maybe I should’ve let a medic do it…”

“ _Yeah, no shit_.”

Zach starts to struggle into a sitting position and Hagan helps him as he goes, keeping a supportive hand on his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t go toppling over backwards. Zach digs the palm of his left hand into one eye, then the other, and blinks away some of the resulting bleariness.

“You alright?” Hagan asks. Zach grunts noncommittally, but Hagan is inclined to take it as a yes – he’s functioning, at least, and more importantly the looming threat of a cardiac event seems to have passed.

“So what’s your problem?” Hagan asks next, and he’s not sarcastic or combative about it. It’s been a long day, and at this point he just wants to be done with this, whatever it is.

Zach never makes shit easy, though. “I don’t have a problem,” he mumbles stubbornly. His expression is resting somewhere between dazed and pouty, and he’s mostly unwilling to look at Hagan, eyes darting up to his face for just a moment or two before falling to the ground or staring off into the middle distance.

“Right. Well, all the best with that, I’ll see you tomorrow –“ Hagan moves to go, and Zach groans.

“Wait,” he says, pausing to work his jaw a bit. He looks like he did in the back of that cop car in the football field parking lot, eyes down, trying to find the right words. What he’d said then had been a kind of shock to Hagan – up until that point he maintained serious doubts whether Zach fully comprehended the events that were occurring around him, and suddenly the kid’s spilling his guts and offering his treasured laser cannon to anyone who could use it to help. There’s no impending threat to the world now, though, and Hagan hasn’t the slightest clue what’s going to come out of Zach this time.

“I just… I thought that being a hero of Earth or whatever would be all, like, getting famous and banging hot chicks and shit. Which is true a lot of the time,” Zach says, either ignoring or oblivious to Hagan’s deepening frown, “but it’s also… serious. Like, life or death serious.”

“Yeah…?”

“So, I don’t know…” Zach’s ability to use his words seems to be failing him here, and Hagan’s still not sure what he’s getting at. Is he trying to say that he’s afraid of dying? Zach doesn’t strike Hagan as the type to contemplate his own mortality all too frequently, so he can imagine how recent events might have shaken his sense of security.

“Listen, Zach, we survived the last fight. We kicked ass, _despite_ the fact that we were literally as unprepared as it is physically possible to be. And now we’re working together, we’re getting better – you’re gonna be fine,” Hagan reassures him, even though he knows it might not actually be true. It just seems like the right thing to say.

Surprisingly, Zach gives an indifferent wave of his cannon arm. “Oh, I know I’m gonna be fine. C’mon, dude, with this thing? I’m gonna be some unstoppable intergalactic warrior pimp.”

“I’m sorry, did a twenty-four year old military cop _not_ just put you on your ass with a weapon you could buy at Wal-Mart?”

Zach’s expression sours slightly, but he continues on regardless. “It’s not me I’m worried about,” he says, and now he finally lifts his eyes to look Hagan full in the face. “And we didn’t _all_ survive the last fight.”

Adam flickers through Hagan’s mind at the same moment that he remembers something else from the stolen cop car that day: _I’m not always gonna be around to bail you out – you realize that, right?_

So that’s what this is about.

“I know we didn’t all make it. And I also know that there’s not really a margin for failure with what we’re doing here. Adam knew that, too.” Hagan sighs, running a hand distractedly through his hair. “But if I have learned absolutely anything over the past week – besides never allowing mysterious extraterrestrial technology to fuse with one of my body parts again – it’s that if we don’t work together, then we don’t stand a chance. We have to trust each other to do our jobs. And that means you have to let me be the one who does the blocking from now on.”

“But –“

“Kid, defense isn’t your strength. Me? Awesome light shield. I can handle it.” Hagan stands, the corner of his mouth twitching up, half genuine smile and half teasing smirk. “Thanks, though. For looking out for me,” he adds, extending his shield hand.

Zach hesitates for just a moment, blood pooling in his cheeks. “Yeah,” he mumbles, taking the offered hand and rising slowly to his feet, “I mean, mostly I was thinking it’d probably make banging with Mindy awkward if I let you get killed by aliens, so –“

Hagan lets go and Zach gives a surprised squawk, swinging his arms in wild disorientation as he lands on his ass again.

“Oh come on, Hagan!” Zach calls after him as he stalks away. “I’m mostly joking! Like, fifteen… twenty percent serious, tops!”

“If I get back to the room before you, I’m locking the door and you can spend the night in your piss clothes.”

He’s answered by a resounding gale of laughter, and the fact that all Zach can see is his back makes it slightly more tolerable when he can’t quite fight down a grudging grin of his own. Hagan supposes this team stuff isn’t a complete pain in the ass all of the time, even when he’s dealing with a bunch of complete pains in the ass.

Now if there was only a way to get Woody off his slow mo kick…

_I wouldn’t hold your breath,_ a haughty British voice echoes through his head.

A problem for another day, then.

**Author's Note:**

> i hit a liittttlllee wall in my other fic and started watching a ton of rt content to pass the time, culminating in... this
> 
> anyway i thought lazer team was pretty fun


End file.
